Sunday, May 22, 2011

Friends

We have started Updates 2012 as a way of communicating with you, a great supporter of President Obama. Sometimes Updates will include humor, vignettes , and approaches meant to enliven the message; that the re-election of Barack Obama is essential to continue the mission we all began in 2006, 2007, and 2008.

Today, we want to provide you with a view on a matter of the utmost gravity and of great concern to our nation, and the world; Middle Eastern Peace and what the President did say as it relates to his speech last Thursday at the US State Department concerning Israel.

There has been a substantial amount of misinformation, misdirection, and just plain manipulation about what the President said and what he meant.

The President did not call for Israel to withdraw to the 1967 lines, but rather that the two sides should negotiate a border based on that line with mutually agreed swaps. By definition this means that there would need to be adjustments to the border to take account of the realities on the ground and to satisfy both sides’ needs. This is consistent with all of the negotiations that have taken place over the past 20 years as well as President Bush’s statements from 2004.

Second, the President called for robust security arrangements to prevent a resurgence of terrorism, stop the infiltration of weapons, and provide effective border security – and made clear that any agreement must not leave Israel vulnerable. He called for two states for two peoples with Israel as a Jewish state, underscored that an agreement must end all claims, and emphasized that all Palestinians must accept Israel’s right to exist to move forward.

Last, he put these principles forward precisely because direct negotiations are the only means to resolve the conflict, and he categorically rejected any Palestinian attempt to avoid negotiations by going to the UN in September. In fact, it was very important to do it yesterday – in anticipation of the President’s trip to Europe next week – so as to frame Palestinian and European efforts. We needed to create an alternative to the Palestinian UN gambit, particularly to keep the Europeans from supporting it, and based on the international reaction to the speech so far, we have done so.

Moreover, we want to get the focus back where it belongs: on Iran.

In that speech, The President laid out his vision for a new era of peace in the Middle East this week -- a vision rooted in an abiding belief in Israel as a Jewish state.

We wanted to make sure you know he'll be discussing this vision further in a speech at the AIPAC Policy Conference tomorrow morning.

AIPAC will be live-streaming the event online. You can tune in tomorrow at 10:00 a.m. Eastern Time here:

http://my.barackobama.com/AIPAC

And if you can't watch the President's speech live, be sure to check it out at the White House site anytime tomorrow afternoon: